


always knew the melody, never heard it rhyme

by groove_bunker



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, Lesbian AU, References to Drugs, katya's a recovering drug addict, so prepare yourself, there's going to be A LOT of shit about mental health in this one, this has been stuck in my head for days, trixie's a singer in a bar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-04-23 03:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14323776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/groove_bunker/pseuds/groove_bunker
Summary: she knows what love's supposed to feel like but there's no way it could happen to her, right?orKatya's continued adventures with country music and a certain country singer[title from 'the mother' by brandi carlile]





	1. sing us a song

She’s drunk.

 

Again.

 

It’s a better way of filling her nights than speed or coke or whatever else she could get her hands on. She knows fussy addicts, addicts who won’t get high off of anything but their favourite. Katya’s never been fussy. Sometimes it’s a strength. Most of the time, it’s worse than a weakness.

 

She’s wandering around an area of town she’s not been in before because she dozed off on the bus and missed her stop. She thought she could make it home from here without catching another bus, but her phone is dead and nothing looks the same in the dark. She thinks she took a wrong turn a little way back, but who the fuck knows? She’s following the sound of music and people; if there’s a bar there, at least they’ll have a phone, she can call for a cab she can’t afford and hopefully get home without being stabbed.

 

The bar is tiny, like it’s been squashed into someone’s living room. The walls are covered in country music paraphernalia, vinyl covers, Stetsons, that kind of thing. There are a few pallets stacked in one corner, with a stool and microphone on them, set up for some kind of live performance. People are crowded around upturned barrels, listening to what Katya now realises is probably Dolly Parton’s greatest hits.

 

“What can I get for you, honey?”

 

She spins around to the tiny corner bar and the woman behind it. She’s got big hair and a deep Texan accent. Katya wonders for a moment if she puts it on for the patrons - it’s a good fit in this tiny bit of the South buried in New York City.

 

She wasn’t going to have another drink, she just wanted to get home to her bed and her cat but…one more won’t hurt, right?

 

“Your cheapest vodka, on the rocks.”

 

“I like the way you think, baby. I’ve not seen you around here before.”

 

Katya’s not really a chat with her bartender kind of person. When she goes to the bar, the idea is to get as drunk as possible, by herself, without one of her housemates trying to look after her. Drinking in her room with the cat just seems…sad. She shouldn’t have to hide away, shouldn’t have to make other people feel better about her problems. It’s her life, and she’s living it the only way she knows how: clinging on to the edge, her fingers red raw.

 

“We don’t get a lot of people wandering in. A bit off the beaten track y’know? Mostly it’s the regulars or people who’ve read about us on the web. Some girls were in here the other day, raving about how they’d seen Trixie on the YouTube and how they just _had_ to come and see the place. Got pissed off when we didn’t have any craft beers on tap. Fuckin’ hipsters.”

 

Seems the bartender is more than happy to carry the conversation on by herself. She slams Katya’s drink down with a little more force than is perhaps strictly necessary and huffs. Katya likes her a little bit. She too gets angry with hipsters when they start invading spaces and _needing_ things. She was at her favourite Indian restaurant the other day with Jinkx and they’d watched a table of 20 somethings storm out because there weren’t any gluten free naans. Maybe they were coeliac. They were probably just _fuckin’ hipsters._

“You’ve got here just in time, in any case. Trixie should be coming out just about now. You like country right?”

 

Katya does not have any strong opinions about country music. She’s never travelled further south than Indianapolis and if she listens to music at all, it’s normally whatever weird experimental shit one of her roommates is blasting through their too-small apartment. She remembers that her parents used to listen to it in the car, when she was small. It was one of those things on their ‘what it means to be American’ checklist. She also ate a lot of Happy Meals as a kid and read every single Nancy Drew book.

 

There’s cheering from the other side of the room and she looks up from her drink, mostly just to be polite. She’s not entirely ready for the vision in pink that greets her. The woman standing on the pile of pallets has bigger hair than the woman behind the bar and she’s dressed like Dolly Parton on LSD. Her jumpsuit looks like it’s been painted on and Katya’s astounded that she can even stay upright in the skyscraper heels she’s wearing.  

 

“Um, hi guys, I’m Trixie Mattel. But you already know that, you drunken assholes.”

 

The crowd laughs along with her, most of them raising their glasses.

 

Then she starts singing, and Katya wonders what kind of God there is up there that would bring her here, on this night to listen to this angel sing. Because that’s what Trixie is, an angel. Sure, she doesn’t look like the ones on the walls of the church back in Boston that her parents used to take her too, but maybe those Orthodox painters just don’t have enough imagination. Maybe they’re not lesbians. That’s probably it.

 

Halfway through one song, the fourth one about lost love and too much liquor, Trixie catches Katya’s eye. It’s not hard; Katya’s been staring at her for the last 25 minutes straight. She tries to grin but figures it turns out more like a grimace. That’s awkward. The singer beams back, her mouth full of too many teeth, her eyes glittering, and Katya feels her heart skip a beat. She’s just so _beautiful_ in a way that no woman has ever been beautiful to Katya before. And Katya’s nothing if she’s not a connoisseur of beautiful women. But Trixie is…she’s something else. All blonde hair and boobs and long legs, perched on a rickety bar stool and staring back at Katya.

 

“Last song, guys. Any requests?”

 

Katya wants to request something so desperately, wants Trixie to play something for her and for her alone. Unfortunately, she can’t think of a fucking country song to save her life. Trixie catches her eye again and raises one painted on eyebrow. Fuck.

 

“Piano Man”

 

Everyone else still in the bar turns to look at her and Trixie stares for a moment, before bursting into laughter. Katya feels a smile on her face, despite her heart hammering its way out of her chest. Trixie’s fiddling with her phone on stage, and then suddenly she’s strumming the opening chords to Piano Man. By the second chorus, the entire bar is singing along and Katya feels pretty proud of herself. If she’s going to come again, she’ll have to look up some country songs, request something that Trixie already knows.

 

She knows she’s going to come here again.

 

Once Trixie walks off stage to rapturous applause, she turns back to the bar. The bar woman looks perturbed.

 

“Piano Man?”

 

“I haven’t listened to a country album since I was about seven, sue me.”

 

“You do speak!”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

She thinks she’s gone too far for a moment, but then the woman laughs. Katya likes her laugh. It’s loud and Katya can feel it pushing the fog out of her head. Normally loud noises when she’s drunk would drive her crazy, but she’s always loved laughter. She loves making people laugh, loves making people happy.

 

It’s not something she’s done much of for a long time now.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a flash of pink and tries to cower into the corner. She’s too drunk to face the stranger she’s been staring at for the last 45 minutes.

 

“Alyssa, I need a drink. Fucking Piano Man, fuck. What the actual fuck?”

 

Alyssa gestures with her head towards where Katya’s sitting, trying to avoid looking at Trixie again.

 

“Vodka tonic, girl?”

 

“Please. Now,” Trixie turns to Katya, fixing her with a glare, “Piano Man?”

 

“I thought…since you’re quite clearly a Guitar Girl…it was probably funnier in my head.”

 

“That’s the funniest fucking thing I’ve heard all week! Alyssa, Piano Man…because I’m a guitar girl…fuck.” She’s laughing too hard to make a proper sentence, and from the caring glance that Alyssa’s giving her, Katya figures that this is a common occurrence, “I like you.”

 

Katya can feel the blush rising up her cheeks and hopes its hidden by her make-up and the low lights in the bar. Suddenly it’s all too small, she needs to get out, all she can smell is Trixie’s perfume and she can’t hear anything above the crashing of her heartbeat. Trixie’s smile is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen and she can’t _cope_ with it right now.

 

“Sorry, I’ve gotta…I’ve gotta go.”

 

It’s only when she leaves the bar that she remembers she was lost. Sighing, she lights a cigarette and starts to trudge back to the main road. Maybe she’ll catch a bus, or there’ll be a cab or something. She’s halfway out of the maze of alleyways when she hears a car pulling up next to her. So much for getting out of here alive. Although how many muggers drive pink Beetles?

 

“Hey, Red, you need a lift somewhere? I’m headed Flatbush way.”

 

Muggers might not drive pink Beetles, but Trixie Mattel, star of Katya’s current anxiety attack sure does. She closes her eyes, trying to count back from 20 in her head, the way her therapist taught her. She feels like she might crumple onto the pavement at any given second, an unappetising idea given the part of town they’re in.

 

“Hey…you ok?”

 

Trixie’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater or from miles away. She crushes what’s left of her cigarette in her hand, barely noticing the pain when it burns against her palm. Sometimes the pain is enough to shock her out of it, to stop everything from crashing over her. But tonight, all she can smell is the memory of Trixie’s perfume and all she feels is trapped. She wants to run but she can’t seem to tell her feet to move. She hears the slam of a car door and then suddenly, there’s a hand shepherding her gently into the passenger seat.

 

“It’s going to be ok, just breathe.” Trixie’s crouched down next to her, practically whispering in her ear, “What can you feel?”

 

Trixie sounds like her therapist. Interesting.

 

“I can feel...the fabric of the car seat on my thighs. I can feel your hair on my shoulder…”

 

“One more, can you manage one more for me honey?”

 

“I can feel my shoes digging into my feet.”

 

“Perfect…you’re doing so great...what can you hear?”

 

“I can hear the wind, I can hear your voice, I can hear…is that Dolly Parton?”

 

She can just about hear the music coming softly from the car speakers, just about concentrate long enough to pick out some of the words. She’s right, it’s Jolene, one of those country songs which is so ubiquitous that even she can pick it out.

 

“Yeah, it’s Dolly.”

 

Katya feels seven again, sitting in the car, listening to the twanging guitars and music that she knew was sad even when she couldn’t understand what all the words meant. She thinks about those car rides, staring out the windows, her mouth agape at all the lights and signs. She can almost hear her parents, muttering in Russian in the front seats, trying not to wake her up from the nap she’s supposed to be taking. But everything’s too new, too exciting. The letters look strange to her, even the ones she recognises aren’t in the right place.

 

“ _Son, kiska”_

 

“Sorry?”

 

Katya’s eyes snap open. She didn’t realise she’d spoken out loud.

 

“It’s…something my mom used to say to me when we were driving around.”

 

“It sounds…Russian? Eastern European definitely.”

 

“Russian, yeah.” Katya yawns, right in Trixie’s face. What a delight. She’s sure her breath smells like stale beer and vodka and she can feel how sweaty she is. No one ever tells you about the anxiety sweats. They’re real and real bad smelling. She can’t understand how Trixie’s staying so close to her right now.

 

 “Let’s get you home. Where abouts do you live?”

 

Turns out, they live a few blocks from one another and as they drive, Katya realises how long she must have fallen asleep for on the bus. Trixie leaves the music on low and doesn’t try to make conversation, which is exactly what Katya needs. She’s exhausted by the drinking and the anxiety attack and by Trixie just being there. They drive slowly through empty streets and Katya lets her eyes droop closed. She doesn’t open them again until Trixie pulls up gently outside her building.

 

“Do you need any help getting up?”

 

“I’ll be fine, thanks. Thanks as well, for, like, everything.”

 

Katya’s halfway out of the car by now, suddenly embarrassed by her anxiety attack in front of a _complete stranger._ She never lets anyone in like that. Not her mom, not her exes, not her friends. Sometimes her therapist, but only under heavy duress. But Trixie…she’s something else.

 

“No worries darling. Sure you can get up alright?”

 

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

 

“Yeah, maybe you will.”


	2. trixie's a fucking dork

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long!! 
> 
> I'm aiming to get into a better schedule but I write for my day job so sometimes coming home to write sounds fucking awful. 
> 
> ANYWAy they're both dumb, I have lots of ideas of how to continue this, ENJOY

“What do you mean you don’t know her name?”

Trixie’s room-mate is incredulous. Kim would _never_ let someone in her car without at least learning their name, for safety reasons apparently. Trixie’s not sure how knowing an axe murderer’s name will prevent your inevitable death but Kim seems to think it’s important.

“I mean, I was going to ask for her name but she had an anxiety attack, and after that, it didn’t seem that important. She speaks Russian, I wonder if she knows Sasha.”

“There are a lot of Russians in New York, Trix. I can’t believe you know she speaks Russian, but you don’t know her name.”

“I hope she’s ok. She was so out of it when she got out of the car.”

Trixie thinks she hears Kim mutter something about useless lesbians as she walks back towards her own bedroom which is both rude and incorrect. Trixie is neither useless nor a lesbian. She’s bisexual and can be deeply useful when anyone has a question about country music. Or cheese, she grew up in Wisconsin, she knows a lot about cheese.

She hadn’t been able to sleep well last night, flashes of the woman’s screwed up face running through her mind. She wonders if she looks like that when she’s panicking. She tends to cry when she panics though, fat hot tears slicing through carefully applied eye make-up, tracking down her face. She hates it, hates crying, hates how ugly crying makes her. The woman last night didn’t look ugly though; Trixie thought she was probably the most beautiful women she’d ever seen. Most people use striking as a kind of insult, Trixie’s realised recently, but she really was striking. She’s all sharp cheekbones and sharper teeth and Trixie hadn’t been able to take her eyes off her. She’d feel embarrassed if it hadn’t been obvious that the feeling was mutual.

She grabs the to-go cup of coffee Kim had been making her before the whole story about the mystery woman had come out and prays it’s not got too cold. She’s already late for work and she can’t really afford to be any later. It’s not a long walk to the Starbucks where she sells her soul for a chance at the real New York experience, now with extra cockroaches. Her mom doesn’t find that joke as funny as Trixie does. She bets the mystery woman would find it hilarious. The coffee’s luke-warm but she still drinks the whole thing before she’s half way to work. She likes to think she can feel it seeping into her bones, waking her up from the inside, especially on days after she’s been singing at the bar. She never sleeps well after performing; too much adrenaline coursing through her veins. The added mystery of the beautiful woman last night had made it even worse.

She gets to work about 5 minutes before the store is due to open and her boss rolls their eyes at her rushing through the back door, coat half off and trying to do her apron up with one hand.

“Late night?”

“I was singing and then there was this woman…it was a mess.”

“Oooh, do tell.”

Trixie can’t believe she used to be scared of Shea. Sure, she’s pretty intimidating on the face of things but she’s a teddy-bear underneath. Unless you say something mean about her girlfriend, Sasha. Then she’s scary as all hell.

She’s also the biggest gossip Trixie knows.

“It’s nothing! It’s…I don’t even know her name.”

“Adore, come here, Trixie banged a girl and never got her name.”

Adore is Trixie’s favourite person to work with. They work hard, laugh with the customers and most importantly, laugh at Trixie’s jokes. Even when they’re a bit on the dark side.

“I didn’t…there was no…I didn’t sleep with her. She came into the bar like 5 minutes before my set apparently, stared at me for like 45 minutes and then freaked out when I started talking to her. Just walked out. So I followed her in my car and she started having a full on panic attack.”

“So she panicked because you were stalking her?”

“Shut up. I talked her down, drove her home, it was only when I got back to mine that I realised I didn’t know her name.”

Adore and Shea are watching Trixie intently.

“That’s it, that’s the story. I’ll probably never see her again.”

Shea sighs and walks off. Not juicy enough for her clearly.

“Why not? You know where she lives. You could just like, go knock on the door or something?”

Trixie had considered it. But then she remembered the look on the other woman’s face when she pulled up beside her in the car. She doesn’t want her to think she’s an actual stalker.

“Coming from the girl who’s already accused me of stalking her.”

Adore shrugs.

“Maybe she’ll come back to the bar.”

Trixie starts laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“She asked me to play Piano Man! I asked for requests, and normally it’s like Stand By Your Man or Landslide, but no. Piano Man.”

“So she wasn’t there for the beautiful Southern vibe Alyssa has so delicately crafted?”

“Honestly, I don’t think she knew where she was half the time. Maybe she was coming down off of something. Alyssa said she was really quiet when she first got there. Maybe she was just off her face.”

“I don’t pay you to stand around chatting!”

Trixie hears Adore mumble that Shea doesn’t technically pay them at all and she snorts.

The morning passes quite quickly, the usual rush of business people in their sharp suits and shiny briefcases making Trixie glad she dropped out of Economics after her first semester. She’s smart as hell, but that life is not the one for her. No one ever looks happy when they come in first thing in the morning and they always buy straight black coffee. In Trixie’s head, drinking black coffee is a sign of deep unhappiness. She doesn’t know anyone who drinks black coffee.

There’s a lull for about an hour, as the people in suits get to their offices and before the moms with their over-sized strollers and under-attended children come in. Trixie often wonders if having this many strollers in one space is a fire hazard. Adore told her once about how in Denmark, they leave the baby in the stroller outside while they have coffee indoors. Trixie’s still not sure if they’re making it up.

Trixie’s taking mugs out of the dishwasher when she hears a soft cough at the counter. She spins around and almost drops the cup she’s holding. Mystery Woman is standing there, with a friend. In the bright light of day, Trixie can tell that her eyes are green and her teeth are just as dazzling as they looked last night. She’s also just as beautiful as Trixie remembers. She takes a shaky step forward and smiles her biggest smile.

“What can I get for you guys?”

Mystery Woman is still staring at her and for a horrible moment, Trixie thinks she’s going to run again, but then she takes a deep breath and steps forward.

“Black coffee to take out and…Dela, what do you want?”

“What would you recommend? I never come here and she,” The dark haired woman jerks a thumb in Mystery Woman’s direction, “only drinks black coffee.”

“Umm, ok…I like hazelnut mochas. They taste kind of like Nutella.”

“That sounds perfect. Thanks!”

“And who’s this for?”

There’s like no one else in there, the mom rush has abated and the lunch rush isn’t due for another half an hour. But Trixie wants to know her name, wants to be able to tell Kim that she met Mystery Woman again and wasn’t such a ditz. The dark-haired woman, Dela or something goes to speak, but Mystery Woman interrupts her.

“It’s for Red.”

Trixie can’t even find the words to describe the smile she shoots at her. Ok, so no name, but a smile. A smile is good. Adore comes wandering back through from the yard out back where they’ve been taking their smoke break. Trixie nudges her.

“That’s her!”

“That’s who?”

Adore may be wonderful and funny and sweet but they’re also the least tactful person on the planet. Trixie had whispered to them and they had practically yelled back.

“Mystery Woman. The blonde.”

Adore looks over to where Red and her friend are standing and lazily wolf-whistles.

“So you missed out the part in your story where she was really fucking hot. And like, older. Didn’t know you had a thing for older women, Trix.”

“Shut the fuck up, I hate you.”

“So did you get her name?”

“She said it was Red. Which it totally could be, but that’s just what I called her last night when I caught up to her.”

It’s the lipstick that had caught Trixie’s eye first. Bright red, smudged a little in one corner. The same lipstick she’s wearing today actually. Trixie normally tones her makeup down for the café, if only because it takes less time. Normally she’d scoff at a woman wearing bright red lipstick in the middle of the day but it suits her. Trixie can’t stop staring.

“Well, just like, write your number on her cup or something.”

“Yeah? Is that not really dorky?”

“You are really dorky.”

“Bitch.”

She writes her number on the cup anyway and stares at the Mystery Woman as she leaves the store. She throws herself into her work for the rest of the day, trying not to think about the messages which may or may not be on her phone when she looks at it. When she grabs her bag to leave, she’s kind of disappointed that there’s nothing. She wanders home in a funk, not really ready for the evening of staring at her phone that awaits her. She could make other plans, but she knows she’ll be distracted waiting.

She’s taken a convoluted route home and ends up walking past the library. It’s been ages since she went into a library, not since she was a little kid in Wisconsin and her mom would take her and her little brother and dump them in the kids section while she hunted for jobs in the paper. Trixie remembers her writing each of them out again in her neat handwriting onto scraps of paper then working out which ones were definitely worth calling because she only had so many quarters for the payphone. She’d loved the library as a kid, the comfort of being surrounded by books, the soft voices of the librarians, the way the time seemed to pass so much more slowly in there.

Before she really knows what she's doing, she pushes through the doors. It’s cool inside and a lot bigger than the little library she used to go to on the outskirts of Milwaukee. She can see the kids section with its brightly coloured rugs and little beanbags set in one corner. There’s a bank of computers in the middle and then shelves upon shelves of books, more books than anyone could ever possibly hope to read in a lifetime. She feels the funk beginning to lift as she drags her finger along the spines. It’s been so long since she sat down and read a book, probably not since college. Everything since then has been a blur of dead end jobs, late nights singing and never finding the time. She’s missed it.

“You’re the girl from Starbucks.”

She looks up and finds she’s almost bumped straight into Mystery Woman’s friend, who’s re-shelving books.

“Trixie,” she holds her hand out and the other woman shakes it, “How did you enjoy that mocha?”

“Dela! It was perfect! I never normally drink coffee but Katya said she’d had a bad night. She normally needs as much coffee as possible after a bad night.”

Katya. She likes it. Somehow, without knowing anything else about Red, it suits her. An unusual name for an unusual woman.

“I’m so glad. About the mocha, not the bad night. Is your friend feeling better now?”

“Yeah, she’s just finished story time for the kids. That always makes her feel better.”

So Mystery Woman is a librarian. Trixie’s beginning to feel like Sherlock Holmes rather than an accidental stalker. She’s got so much to report back to Kim now, most importantly a real name.

“I’m glad. You might be able to help me out actually, I’ve not picked up a book in ages. Have you got anything you would recommend?”

“Oooh! Do I have recommendations for you? You bet your ass I do.”

Dela’s chatty, as chatty as a librarian can be, as they walk in and out of the shelves. She piles books into Trixie’s arms until she can barely see over the top. She’s from Seattle but she hates the rain there. She originally went to college for fine art but ended up switching her major half way through. She just loves Trixie’s make up and hair, raves about it for about five minutes straight before they’re interrupted.

“Dela, are you talking to yourself again?”

Katya pokes her head around the corner of one of the stacks, grinning. She’s got glasses hanging around her neck on a chain and a pencil stuffed behind her ear. She’s really selling this librarian thing.

“Projecting, are we, Kat?”

“Some like to say that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness. The same people say that madness is often a sign of genius, so really, talking to yourself is just…genius.”

“No, you’re just fucking crazy.”

Katya pauses for a moment and Trixie thinks she’s crossed a line. People with clear and obvious mental health problems don’t always appreciate being called crazy. But Katya bursts out laughing and it’s the most ridiculous laugh Trixie’s ever heard in her life. Katya’s whole body convulses with it as she barks. It would be loud in the middle of Grand Central; in the library, it’s practically deafening.

“I like you. Dela, I like her.”

“Trust me, I’m _very_ aware.”

Dela’s tone is deadpan and if Katya wasn’t shooting her a look that could commit serial murder, Trixie would have laughed. Dela turns back to her and grins.

“Shit, I totally just left those books there. Kat, you’ll help Trixie check out, right?”

Katya’s still glaring at Dela as she walks back the way her and Trixie had come.

“If you’re busy, I can sort myself out.”

Katya slowly turns her head to focus on Trixie.

“I’m not busy. Dela’s just a rotted cunt, that’s all.”

This time it’s Trixie’s turn to burst out laughing. She’s always loved people who’re blunt - she’s dealt with too many people who haven’t been able to tell her what they think. It always ends up hurting more than they think it will.

“Let me take some of these. Did you ask Dela for recommendations? She never knows when to stop.”

“I just haven’t really read much since college, I didn’t really know where to start.”

They’re walking slowly in the vague direction of the main desk, their voices barely above a whisper. Trixie can’t take her eyes off her. She’s not classically beautiful, all sharp angles and smudged makeup, but she is magnetic.

“This is definitely a start. Did you go to college in New York?”

“Yeah, I got the fuck out of Wisconsin as soon as I fucking could. How about you?”

“Boston. I knew you couldn’t be a city girl, you looked far too comfy in those cowboy boots last night.”

“You know we don’t actually all wear cowboy boots and Stetsons all the time, right?”

“How many pair of cowboy boots would I find if I broke into your house while you were sleeping?”

“Are you always this fucking creepy?”

“Only for you, Tracey.”

They’ve reached the desk at this point. Katya slips behind it and starts clicking away on a computer. Trixie can see at least 5 coffee cups strewn across the desk, none of which are from Starbucks. She should never have let Adore convince her to write her stupid number on the cup. Now she just looks desperate. And weird.

“Do you have a library card?”

Trixie shakes her head.

“Perfect, I’ll be getting to know you better then. So, Tracey Martel…”

Katya types something and then turns the screen towards Trixie to check the spelling. Trixie nods.

“Right, address.”

“Are you going to break into my house while I’m sleeping to count my pairs of cowboy boots?”

“So you do admit you have more than one!”

“Shut up.”

Trixie gives Katya the finger but she’s actually having fun. The other woman is fucking crazy, but in the best way possible. She gives Katya her address, a few streets over from where she knows Katya lives. When she’s finished typing, Katya starts rustling around in the pockets of her dress, mumbling to herself. She pulls out her cup from earlier with a loud ‘Aha!’

“I’m assuming you didn’t give me a fake number?”

“Why would I…no, I did not give you a fake number.”

“Good, because I will be utilising that later,” Trixie's glad that Katya's focused on the screen as she types out the number, because she does a little fist pump at the idea of Katya texting her. She is a fucking dork. “All done! I’ll just...”

She trails off as she starts digging through one of the drawers under the desk, emerging with a blank card. She seems to exist in a constant state of chaos. Her blonde hair is falling out from the loose bun she’d tied it in and Trixie finds herself desperate to lean over the counter and brush it away. Then she remembers how scared Katya had looked last night at the bar, three feet away from Trixie. Touching her without specific consent probably isn’t the best idea.

“Let me show you how to use the check out machines, they can be…they need updating. But does the mayor give us more money? Does he fuck.”

Katya grabs all of Trixie’s books under one arm and Trixie’s elbow with the other. Trixie practically swoons knowing how strong Katya must be to hold all those books at once. At the same time, she’s wondering how the hell she’s going to get them all home again. The machines are slow but they’re not that complicated - Trixie’s pretty sure she could have figured them out by herself. Not that she’s complaining about having Katya stand next to her. She smells like men’s deodorant, cigarettes and coffee. Trixie hates smoking and spends all day smelling coffee, but she’s intoxicated by it, by the way it smells warm and comforting. It reminds her of professor’s offices when she was at college, how they felt safe and cozy when everything else seemed to be going wrong. 

“Annnnnd you’re all set! Let me grab you a bag!”

Trixie thinks she could get used to trailing after Hurricane Katya.

\---

 

**Red:** I’m so glad this wasn’t a fake number

**Tracey:** who is this?

**Red:** Shut up!!! Don’t toy with my emotions like this, bitch.

**Tracey:** somehow i knew u would text with punctuation ;) 

**Red:** English degree, can’t let it go 

**Tracey:** as if u weren’t an art major!!!!

**Red:** You are not at a high enough level to unlock that part of my tragic backstory

**Tracey:** Will coffee help me level up? (nerd) 

**Red:** It’s a date, sugar

 

 


End file.
